Preached on the Fifth Sunday in Lent, April 6, 2025, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington by The Reverend Phillip Lienau.
Isaiah 43:16-21
Philippians 3:4b-14
John 12:1-8
Psalm 126
Portrait of the Woman with the Alabaster Jar, by Benedict Edet
The story in today’s Gospel was so important to early Christians that a version of it shows up in all four Gospels. The Matthew and Mark versions are almost identical. In both of those Gospels, Jesus is at dinner, in the house of Simon the leper in Bethany, and an unnamed woman comes to Jesus with an alabaster jar of very costly ointment, or perfume. In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus is at dinner in the house of “one of the Pharisees.” Luke alone identifies the woman as “a sinner,” which becomes an important aspect of that version because the judgment of the woman by the Pharisee is contrasted with Jesus’ compassion and forgiveness.
In fact, in all four Gospels, the woman is judged harshly by others, whether she is unnamed, an unnamed “sinner,” or Mary, the sister of Martha and the recently resurrected Lazarus. In Luke, the Pharisee judges her. In Mark, “some who were there” judge her. In Matthew, it’s “the disciples,” and in John, it’s Judas Iscariot.
One of the reasons I am talking about all four Gospel accounts today, is that this common theme of harsh judgement can inform how we look at the character of Judas in today’s Gospel. This is because if we only look at the version in John, we could be tempted to distance ourselves from Judas too quickly. In John we read that Judas “was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.”
It could be too easy to decide that Judas’ bad behavior in judging the woman is connected to him being a thief, so that if any of us don’t identify as thieves, then maybe we can decide that we would never judge that woman the way Judas does, because surely we are not as bad as Judas. We’re not thieves, hopefully, and even more importantly, we would never dream of being the person who would betray Jesus to death. And since we hope not to be that person, we are probably unlikely to behave as Judas does at this dinner.
The fallacy here is that in the other three Gospels, the same harsh judgement comes from people other than Judas. Pharisees are often depicted in a negative light in the Gospels, so maybe we could claim not to be like the Pharisee in Luke’s Gospel. Even in Mark’s Gospel perhaps we could claim that we would not be like some of the people who judged the woman, but instead the other people who presumably did not. But it’s when we get to Matthew’s Gospel that we have no-where else to hide, because in that version, it’s “the disciples.” Whenever those words are used, “the disciples,” it’s pretty clear that it’s us.
So, back to John’s Gospel. I think we are all invited to ask ourselves if we might be inclined, in our worse moments, to join Judas in his judgment of this woman. Now, my confession to you today is that it is easy for me to imagine that I am like Judas in this story. That is because, at least in the Matthew, Mark, and John versions, the harsh judgement is about money, and how best to spend it.
I think by now if you’ve listened to a few of my sermons, or talked at length with me about Christian ministry, you’ll know that I am passionate about economic justice. And so every time I hear this story, in the Matthew, Mark, or John versions, I tend to stand, at first anyway, with Matthew’s “disciples,” with Mark’s “some who were there,” and with John’s Judas.
I am sorry to say that it has always been too easy for me to judge other people, especially if it has to do with money. And the log in my own eye is that I have spent money in my life on things that could have been sold, or never purchased in the first place, so that I could give more money to, as Judas puts it, “the poor.” And yet, I all too often go on judging, and harshly.
I also have sympathy for Judas here, and the judgmental people in Matthew and Mark. We could say that these people are good students of Jesus, hearing clearly from Jesus that we should sell what we have and give the money to the poor. I want to raise my hand in the middle of this Gospel and say, uh, Teacher, from a Christian economic standpoint, isn’t Judas kind of right?
And this is one of the many, many times I am so thankful for the patience of our Teacher. Because I think Jesus is pretty patient with what I might call a mono-focus that we can bring to his teaching. It is so easy, for me at least, to pick out one sentence, or even a phrase, and decide, “Aha! This is it! Now I know what to do.”
With one exception, I’m going to make a big claim here, that with Jesus’ teaching, there is always more to consider, especially context, and the relationships involved. The one exception, I think, is the commandment to love God and love neighbor, because that teaching brings context and relationship to all the rest.
In other words, this Gospel is not about the money. I want it to be about the money, because then I get to be self-righteous and judgmental, or at best, I get to feel like I’m doing something to make our economic systems more just. But what Jesus is trying to teach Judas, and me, here, is to ask the question: “what is the relationship cost, the cost to love, of my judgment?”
Let’s pry our eyes off the money for just a moment, and think about the context, and the relationships here. Just one chapter previous in the Gospel of John, we hear that Lazarus is deathly ill. Mary and Martha send a message to Jesus. The message is this: “Lord, he whom you love is ill.” Jesus does not go. Let that sink in for a moment. These are Jesus’ friends, and he does not go to them. It could feel to them like a slap in the face, as if to say, I don’t love Lazarus, or I don’t love him enough to go to him while he is deathly ill. We know that Jesus is going to go, and that he will resurrect Lazarus, but in the moment, Mary and Martha don’t know that.
Then when Jesus does go, Lazarus has already died. Martha comes out to him, and she, that champion of authentically and honestly speaking her mind, says to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here my brother would not have died.” She tempers this assertion immediately, saying, “But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.” That is a very faithful thing to say, but I like to think that the sting of that first sentence hangs in the air. “Lord, if you had been here my brother would not have died." And then Mary comes and says exactly the same thing! “Lord, if you had not been here, my brother would not have died.”
I am with these sisters. There have been times in my life, when I have lost a loved one in what we might call an untimely way, that I have cried out in my heart, “Lord, if you had been here, my loved one would not have died!” I mean it as a lament, and maybe also as an accusation. I can be angry. This is why I am with Martha and Mary here, a companion with them in their lament, and, I think, in their anger.
So, all that has just occurred. Then, the impossible happens. Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead. But John’s Gospel does not tell us how Mary and Martha responded to this miracle, at least not right away. The narrative directly goes to what other people thought.
It goes right into politics, with the chief priests and the Pharisees calling a meeting of the council to plan to put Jesus to death. Today’s Gospel passage then follows that bit of politics, so that this dinner is our first glimpse into what it it’s like in the house of Martha, Mary and Lazarus after the miracle.
I invite you to think about someone you have loved and lost. What if they were resurrected today, and you could have dinner them tonight, and not only that, but He who raised your loved one, was also at dinner with you. Imagine it, tonight, in this very city, you dine with a lost loved one, and Jesus.
And then let’s add this, that you just know in your heart, somehow the Holy Spirit just tells you, so that you know down to your bones, that Jesus is only with you for a little while longer. This meal tonight could well be the last time you see Jesus. How do you think you would honor Jesus at that meal tonight?
I personally don’t have a pound of costly perfume, but I think if I did, oh I’d bring that out. I’d use all of it. I wouldn’t care how much it cost. And I think I would be on my knees, at Jesus’ feet if he would let me, maybe wishing I had longer hair.
And it is all of this context, all of these relationships, between Martha and Mary and Lazarus and Jesus, that Judas misses. He misses it entirely. In his self-righteous mono-focus on this one thing, economics, he has missed the point of all of it. The point of giving money way isn’t about economics; it’s about repairing relationships in our communities.
We could all be in exactly the same economic situation, we could solve poverty worldwide, and that would not necessarily mean that we were in loving relationship with each other. It would just mean that we had solved a math problem, a distribution problem, a political problem. Jesus teaches us to be in loving relationship with each other.
And speaking of loving, look at how compassionate, and patient, Jesus is with Judas. And this is true in the Gospels of Matthew and Mark too. Jesus doesn’t tell Judas to leave, he doesn’t shame him, he simply patiently defends the woman anointing him. He teaches Judas, the disciples, and us, gently. And when I am like Judas in my self-righteous judgment, I pray that Jesus may extend a fraction of this gentle and compassionate patience to me.
Jesus tells Judas that Mary bought the perfume so that she might keep it for the day of Jesus’ burial. With the benefit of hindsight, we know that the death of Jesus, just days away for Mary and Martha and Lazarus and Judas in this story, and just days away for us, is not just the death of Jesus, but the death of a perspective about him.
When Jesus dies, the dreams of a military rebellion led by him dies. When Jesus dies, the perspective that he is here to serve only our needs as we perceive them dies. When Jesus dies, the perspective that he is just one more radical economic philosopher dies. What is raised at Easter for Mary, Martha, Lazarus, and us, is a perspective about Jesus that includes the human but is now enfolded into the cosmic Christ.
So when Mary prepares Jesus for burial by anointing him with the perfume, the fragrance of which fills the house, she is also preparing her own strictly human-scale perspective for burial. That is Lenten work for all of us. We are all called to bury our smaller, self-centered perspectives so that we may be raised up in the joy of God’s perspective of us and each other.
This is not to shame the smaller perspective. No, we are to honor the human perspectives, made in God’s image, the way Mary honors Jesus. It’s just that that’s not the whole story.
The raising of Lazarus is a great story all its own. The dinner afterward could be a perfect end to this great story. But Mary knows, as we do, that all the tragedies and triumphs, and miracles, in our lives, are part of a much bigger story, God’s story.
This week, we prepare for Palm Sunday and Holy Week beyond it. These are days when we bring our collective focus to Jesus, and to the Passion he is about to endure, out of the great compassion, patience, and love that he has for us. How are you preparing for the burial of Jesus, and of any self-centered perspectives that may need to die to be raised up into God’s perspective?
This is a good time to prepare for burial as Mary does. And to notice, and honor, how your neighbor might be preparing for burial alongside you. Let us take a moment to notice, and give thanks to God, for how the fragrance of all our preparations fill this house.